You may have seen this new Imagineering video on the Disney Parks blog yesterday, but if you didn't you must not miss it! The video begin where the previous one with the magic mirror that you've seen last week ended, and WDI Imagineers really outdone themselves with the two Audio-Animatronics of Lumière and Wardrobe which are literally amazing! . The AA of Wardrobe is already great but the one of Lumière is simply incredible.
Why? look at how his arms are moving, his face talking, etc... The difficulty here, because of Lumière thin body and arms was that Imagineers didn't had a lot of space available for the animatronic elements. The one of Ursula in the Little Mermaid ride was not easy but at least they had some room in Ursula's big body, which is not the case here. Big congrats to anyone at WDI who created these wonders, a real technical tour de force!
Picture and video: copyright Disney
My guess is that Lumière has some kind of mechanism attached to the back of his arms, and we don't see it because of the dark background. I think those arms are too tiny to move by themselves without help.
ReplyDeleteFantsastic AAs! However this attraction should be a ride not a meet n greet. The excellent AAs deserve to be in a ride with a grand finale where the beast and all the characters are in human form. That would've blown away the audience and its what Walt would've done I think.
ReplyDeleteYou can see in the video that the attraction is only for small children. As an adult once you finish being in awe of the detailed AAs it becomes a child's attraction. Walts goal was to build attractions that adults and children would both enjoy. That's why he created rides for all of his classic tales and the original fantasy land. People of all ages enjoy them because they are leisurely, beautiful and entertaining.
ReplyDeleteWow! The lip-sync on the wardrobe is amazing. They really have her lips, teeth and jaws all moving independently of each other and it really looks like she's talking. Great job.
ReplyDeleteI assume though that while WDI is in charge of all this, all the Audio-Animatronics are probably being created by Garner-Holt, especially since they've done all the recent AA's (Radiator Springs Racers, Little Mermaid, etc...). I'm glad Disney's putting this quality into attractions, but it seems a bit disingenuous to not give credit for such stunning work, where it's due.
Although I think its done beautifully I really dont like the idea .
ReplyDeleteGreat detail but I think that certainly for adults its like been there ,done that .
Agree with danelz6 ,its just not for the whole family and was not what Walt intended .
Certainly nothing that Universal would worry about.
I'm fine with upping the meet-and-greet to a bigger experience. But this will mean really, really slow lines, painfully slow, I fear. Even with two or three Belles and Lumieres (I assume they have to have built more than one room to meet and interact with Belle), I figure this will have such a painfully-long wait that a ride would have been the more logical choice. It wasn't by accident that Disney decided to put in a Pirates ride instead of the Pirates walk-through they had initially planned. Craig Svonkin
ReplyDeleteExactly Craig! Imagine if it was only a walk through? Imagine if the haunted mansion was a walk through? If he didn't bother making a full scale replica steam Wheeler in his frontierland? Or if he didn't put a whopping 10 rides based on his movies in his fantasyland plus 1 e ticket(Matterhorn)! Indeed Disneyland wouldn't be the success it is today and theme park history would've been radically different.
ReplyDeleteLumiere is stunning. Although, my personal thought is that this meet and greet did lose Walt's vision, as others have said. I would have had lumiere be the "host" of the Be Our Guest restaurant. They could have incorporated some of the technology used in Mr. Potato Head in TSM and had him greet guests as they arrived. Also, to "plus it" he could have actually taken the guests names and party size as they arrived and when there wasn't a line he could have interacted with guests waiting for a table. Just a thought...
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